Fast Break Thoughts: Still No Progress…

Today, the Owners and Players Association met again today, and as Adrian Wojnarowski said in the tweet above, not a lot of progress has been made. While this news isn’t particularly good, it seems as if there was something in the 5 and a half hour meeting that prompted both sides to meet again as early as next week. At this point in time, there aren’t a lot of details surrounding the details of what went on in the meeting, so we’ll have to wait for reports to surface for the time being.

If you haven’t checked out already, ESPN’s 5-on-5 discussed the lockout and how it affects both Kobe and Lebron.

Navarro’s teammate Pau Gasol was clearly the best player in the tournament. In addition to being tops in terms of total wins, Gasol was also the most efficient player (as measured by EWP/40) in the entire tournament. The fact that Gasol lost out to his teammate is a travesty. But overall, the all-tournament team did pretty well. Of the five selections, the only one I have an issue with is Navarro. Which isn’t too bad – it’s not like he won the MVP or anything.

Brian Windhorst of the Heat Index explains how some teams, most notably the Heat, can take advantage of an amnesty clause if such a clause (which is expected) should be in the new collective bargaining agreement.

For months there has been speculation that a new CBA would contain such a clause, which was first used as part of the last CBA deal in 2005. It’s a mechanism to help phase in new rules and create a bridge for teams who are stuck with bad contracts. Six years ago it was used to help teams avoid a more penal luxury tax. The highest profile player to be released was Michael Finley, who the Mavericks waived to save more than $30 million in luxury-tax payments at the time.

This week the Portland (Ore.) Oregonian reported that there’s a consensus among owners to include another amnesty clause in the new CBA that would help clear space in what are expected to be more restrictive salary caps. Of course no one can predict the future but the signs continue to indicate the new deal will have some sort of amnesty option in it.

Yao is asking his fellow countrymen to stop eating shark fins, and while his words may not make much of a dent in changing a centuries-old Chinese tradition, this is a very good thing. Because the practice of securing shark fins is a terrible, terrible thing.

Shark fin soup is considered a delicacy in China, and though the price of a fin can be more than exorbitant, that doesn’t stop the massive consumption of the dish. A dish that, frankly, is more show than substance.

Reality is setting in for me. Training camp and preseason are offically gone. Yes, I expected it. But seeing it become official really frustrates me. I just get this feeling that once regular season games start being lost the chances of the whole season being canceled will increase. I really hope I am wrong.

It’s kind of messed up what they do with the shark afterwards. that’s just cruel. At least use up the rest of the shark. In Trinidad we have a delicasy called Bake and Shark. Essentially it’s fried shark meat put between fried bake bread.

As for the NBA, it’s ironic that you called your article ” Fast Greak” when the CBA negotiations have been going nowhere (LOL)ToT

The funny thing about all this lockout stuff is that the owners are fighting to get out of the CBA that they largely established. The vast majority of people all agree that the players got screwed in the last CBA negotiations, with the owners getting most of what they were asking for, right? So where the hell did the owners go so wrong to be hemorrhaging money like they claim to be?

It can’t be player salaries, since those are a fixed part of the BRI and the players have consistently been surrendering 10 percent of their salaries back to the owners to bring it back to the 57% number. There are likely a large number of factors, but the most glaring answer would be the new owners who bought in for hundreds of millions of dollars for teams that shouldn’t have been worth that much, leveraging tons of debt in the process and adding those interest payments to their outgoing cash flow.